TOP 4 MUST KNOW PRINT ADVERTISING STATISTICS
Print advertising is a vital part of any marketing campaign. While just about everything is done online, many things are also done with print. To help make sense of the ever-evolving advertising world, here are the top four must know print advertising statistics.
1. Mail vs Email
There is still a certain joy to be had when you discover a letter in your mailbox. It used to be that when mail was delivered there was a sense of doom, as it most likely contained a bill. But because most banking is done online now, delivered mail means something positive.
Mail is sorted through. It is opened. It is looked at. In fact, 91% of physical mail is opened. In contrast, email is often discarded before being opened. Only 11% of advertising email is opened. With email, there is a sense that the content is obvious from the subject line, so why bother opening it.
There is a perception that because email is extremely fast, traditional mail has now been dubbed ‘snail mail.’ And while email is instantaneous, traditional mail remains to be surprisingly quick. Letters sent to people in the same city are often delivered the next business day. Companies that use mail advertisements can schedule their pamphlets and be assured that they will arrive in the designated timeframe. Mail is not dead yet, and it should not be overlooked.
2. Magazines are King
It’s Saturday morning. It’s raining outside, and you just want to curl up, have hot tea, and read something. As you sit in your favorite chair, you pick out a magazine to read from a stack. This is not an out of the ordinary scenario. It happens all the time, and the statistics hold true. In fact, a staggering 95% of people under the age of 25 read magazines.
Magazines are perfect if you want to read something, but don’t have the time to immerse yourself in a book. They hold specific topics, so you can be assured that you will find something interesting in the magazine of your choice. The pictures are glossy, and hold more detail than online images.
Magazines are bought both as a subscription or one-time only. Subscriptions are great as the renewal process is usually automatic. And who hasn’t bought a magazine or two for an airplane ride.
Print advertising can take advantage of magazines because the genre of the magazine creates the demographic. Teen magazines have teen readers. Garden magazines have nature-lover readers. It’s easy for companies to decide which magazines to choose for their advertising purposes.
3. The Money Game
The easiest print advertising statistic to understand pertains to money. Across the globe, the print advertising industry outsells the online advertising industry by $765 billion. This may come as a shock, especially because online advertising is such a driving force. But while almost everyone is connected online nowadays, they are also connected offline.
Just because people are regularly glued to their smartphones does not mean that they don’t come up for air anymore. People still read books. They still read magazines. And they certainly still open their mail.
So who uses print advertising? Just about everyone. 60% of chief marketing officers agree that print advertising is important. And these officers represent diverse companies. Whether you are selling a product or a business, are local or global, there is still a place for print advertising.
4. Combined Effort
Print advertising still has its place in any marketing campaign, but it is important to combine it with digital advertising. A perfect way to merge the two is through QR codes. While it has taken QR codes longer than first thought to be successful, they still have an important role to play in bridging print and online advertising.
QR codes are found in print advertising. You can then scan them with a smartphone which will lead you to an online campaign. From 2015 to 2016, QR codes increased in advertising by 11%. As well, the number of scans made per person continues to rise.
QR codes are not always successful, but that is because they aren’t often used right. It’s not enough to just put one in the corner of a print ad. Rather, there needs to be a reason, or a hook, to make a consumer want to go to the effort of scanning the code. If you can put a bit of imagination into an advertisement, results will follow.